If you are a writer, please follow his lead and remix/mash-up an existing text. I'm doing it. So should you. It will be the future. It will be the post-postmodern.
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The estimable Adam Robinson tagged me in facebook-world, but since I don't really participate much in that world (or in myspace-world, for that matter, despite the fact that I do exist in both) I figured I would address his inquiry about my position on Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting in a Room" right here.
To be honest, I had never heard of Lucier or his work before. So I did some research and can now share what I've discovered:
"I am sitting in a room" is a composition in which Lucier records himself speaking this text:
"I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have."
Then, he plays the recording back in a room where he records the recording. Then, he repeats the process until the recording is simulacra of simulacra.
It was composed in 1970 and was first performed at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City that same year.
You can here the original iteration, before it becomes multi-generational, here.
More Lucier stuff, including the complete 15minute original recording, at UbuWeb.
"Collage artist Residuum takes the text by Lucier and lets the computer speak it. And as a computer can only speak virtually, the technique is applied to virtual space, i.e. a plugin, that simulates the echoes of real space. Over and over again, 59 times, to be precise."
Also, Digital/new media artists Joel Kraut and David Tinapple created a live, interactive digital version of Lucier's piece.
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William T. Vollmann shares his ten favorite books, and what makes them special to him.
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"Paradoxes and Oxymorons" by John Ashbery Created by Kate Raney Read by DJ Spooky
I am honored to be included in this issue alongside:
Isadora Bey Kristina Born Aaron Burch Blake Butler Luca Dipierro Scott Garson Rachel B. Glaser Brandon Hobson Edward Kim Matt Kirkpatrick Rauan Klassnik Lee Klein Darby Larson Evan Lavender-Smith Patrick Leonard Eugene Lim Sean Lovelace Anthony Luebbert Conor Madigan Gene Morgan Bryson Newhart Christian Peet Jennifer Pieroni Kathryn Regina Joanna Ruocco Bradley Sands Ken Sparling William Walsh Corey Zeller
My contribution is a remix of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi.
Ohio artist Kristin Coburn earned her MFA at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University:
Monday, January 26, 2009
"There's still time to submit for the second issue of Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion. We're looking for submissions that take a smart and savvy look at everyday persuasions. Please take a stroll through our current issue and then head to For Creators to submit something yourself. We welcome contributions of all sorts—no observation too pointed, no style too random. Submissions for the spring issue are due February 2. So, get out there and analyze the everyday, critique the common, and bring the banal to Harlot."
Sunday, January 25, 2009
John Zorn's phenomenal Godard/Spillane (1985), which he describes:
"When a single composition contains noises, guided improvisation, written passages and a variety of genres and unnotable musical shapes, the problem of unity becomes particularly compelling. Unity in a composition means that each and every moment has a reason for being there, and that every sound can be explained within a system. Using a dramatic subject (Godard, Spillane, Duras, Duchamp, Genet) as a unifying device was a revelation. It insures that all musical moments, regardless of form or content, will be held together by relating in some way to the subject's life or work."
"The purpose of art, for Hegel, is thus the creation of beautiful objects in which the true character of freedom is given sensuous expression.
The principal aim of art is not, therefore, to imitate nature, to decorate our surroundings, to prompt us to engage in moral or political action, or to shock us out of our complacency. It is to allow us to contemplate and enjoy created images of our own spiritual freedom—images that are beautiful precisely because they give expression to our freedom. Art's purpose, in other words, is to enable us to bring to mind the truth about ourselves, and so to become aware of who we truly are. Art is there not just for art's sake, but for beauty's sake, that is, for the sake of a distinctively sensuous form of human self-expression and self-understanding."
New entry in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Hegel's Aesthetics
Watched an amazing 45 minute documentary this morning that Mathias Svalina posted on his blog about this New York City street performer called S.K. Thoth. I found it absolutely captivating: I could not stop watching. The guy has created his own world with its own language, its own creatures, its own mythologies. He plays the violin and sings opera-style in the language he created.
For what it's worth, the video, directed by Sarah Kernochan, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject:.
For an example of the cultural bankruptcy of the American masses, witness the abysmal reception Thoth received on NBC's "America's Got Talent":
Sometimes people make me feel embarrassed and disgusting.
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Speaking of musical genius. Have you ever heard of Craig Burk? I came across his work while researching experimental music earlier this week. I can best describe it as incomparable. And I give it my highest level of recommendation.
In the course of listening to about five minutes of his album The History of Decency/Out to the Various Edges, Caitlin remarked, "It’s like a kid’s television show – he's like a Henry Darger-type - this sounds like bad sci-fi shows – talk about marching to your own drummer - this is crazy and fun!"
KORA, edited by Zachary C. Bush, is a journal of avant-garde poetry, prose, & 'experimental' literary hybrids.
Issue #1 is now alive, including work by:
LOUIS E. BOURGEOIS J.A. TYLER SEAN LOVELACE BRANDI WELLS J. MICHAEL WAHLGREN RAY SUCCRE & a new piece by moi entitled "Personal Example of Friedrich Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence," which is intended to be read forwards and backwards.
“Postmodernism, in a sense, was simply the name under whose guise certain artists and thinkers realized what modernism had been: a desperate attempt to establish a ‘distinctive feature of art’ by linking it to a simple teleology of historical evolution and rupture.” (pg. 28)
“The notion of the avant-garde defines the type of subject suitable to the modernist vision and appropriate, according to this vision, for connecting the aesthetic to the political. Its success is due less to the convenient connection it purposes between the artistic idea of innovation and the idea of politically-guided change, than to the more covert connection it establishes between two ideas of the ‘avant-garde’.…In short, there is the idea that links political subjectivity to a certain form: the party, an advanced detachment that derives its ability to lead from its ability to read and interpret the signs of history. On the other hand, there is another idea of the avant-garde that, in accordance with Schiller’s model, is rooted in the aesthetic anticipation of the future.” (pg. 29)
[to quote my friend Tim: "It's where he basically says that he's wrong and Deleuze is right. It's the essay where he ends the first paragraph with the prophetic, 'perhaps one day, this century will be known as Deleuzian.'"]
"Once in a while I see a person on the street who immediately attracts my attention. I’m fascinated by the appearance of the person and feel a strong urge to walk over and say hi.
I spent one month, seven hours a day, walking the streets of New York in search for people who had this effect on me. I found ten, and asked each of them the same question: What do you think about your face?"
"I think that if you sliced my face down the middle then both sides wouldn’t be the same."
"My face has made me a lot of money because I’m a professional model. I pose for artists and photographers, and people love to do sculptures and portraits of my face."
"I think that God has given me a beautiful face. I’m very grateful for my face."
Monday, January 19, 2009
Blake Butler's new novella, Ever, is alive and ready to be read by you. I share my thoughts about the book here.
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One of my favorite spots, "Exit, pursued by a bear" brought to my attention new additions to the John Ashbery page at Pennsound.
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Karen Knorr currently teaches photography at the University College of Creative Arts in Farnham:
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Here is a good spot to find full text versions of critical theory for free download.
Philosopher Graham Harman offers up (for free download!) thirteen unpublished essays. (Right now I'm reading one of them called "Aesthetics as Cosmology," which is pretty interesting.)
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Gong
"Radio Gnome Invisible"
Live 1990
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"DeLanda Destratified: Observing the Liquefaction of Manuel DeLanda"
